Sci-Tech

After a prolonged quiet period, the sun let off an explosion Wednesday when a new sunspot fired a small solar flare lasting over an hour.The high-energy blast caused disruptions for some radio operators in Europe and Africa, but it was accompanied by a slower-moving, massive cloud of charged particles known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that will deliver Earth a glancing blow this weekend. All those particles colliding with Earth's magnetic field could turn up the range and the intensity of the aurora, also known as the Northern and Southern Lights. Aurora are caused by particles from the sun that are constantly flowing toward our planet, but a CME delivers an extra large helping that can really amp up the display. In North America, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that the aurora borealis could be visible as far south as New York and Chicago on March 23, likely in the early morning hours. One of the most helpful metaphors for … [Read more...] about A solar storm hits Earth this week, pushing ‘Northern Lights’ south

SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk are hoping to make the first baby steps towards Mars this week when a small, single engine "hopper" version of its Starship rocket is fired up at the company's test launch site at the southernmost tip of Texas. The company's Boca Chica launch pad is just five miles down the coastline from vacation destination South Padre Island. SPadre.com has set up the above livestreaming webcam aimed at the launch site, where the mini-Starship is clearly visible.The local information site reports that the test firing is currently set to happen sometime between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. (Central Time) on Thursday.Neither SpaceX nor Musk have announced an official test timeframe, but the CEO did respond to questions on Twitter about this week's reported test, explaining that the Starship prototype "will lift off, but only barely."So if the hopper does get some thrust beneath it Wednesday, it's likely to be just enough to hover rather than really fly. The Federal … [Read more...] about How to watch SpaceX test fire its Starship ‘hopper’

NASA astronomers have discovered a pulsar zipping though space like a hyperspeed cosmic cannonball, travelling at 2.5 million miles per hour -- five times faster than your average pulsar.At that speed, it's travelling at a startling 694 miles per second. If you could somehow build a cannon capable of firing this pulsar from the starboard side of your pirate ship in the Atlantic Ocean, it would speed around the Earth and hit your port side 35 seconds later. Arrrr!Pirate ships aside, a pulsar is the rapidly rotating, dense star left behind in the wake of a massive supernova explosion. Astronomers believe that the explosion can send the pulsar hurtling through space like a cannonball. This one, named PSR J0002+6216, was discovered using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which originally launched to space in 2008, and a suite of Earth-based radio telescopes known as the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array.PSR J0002+6216 -- or "J0002" -- is not like most of those other, … [Read more...] about NASA telescope spots a cosmic ‘cannonball’ hurtling through space

Be sure to keep your car doors closed during a hot day in Australia, or you could end up with a koala as a new carpool buddy.That's exactly what happened to South Australian winemaker Tim Whitrow. Whitrow had left the doors open and the air conditioning on in his parked car so his dog could get in and out of it while he briefly went to check on the grapes at his family's vineyard. When he returned there was a surprising new passenger in his vehicle."As I was moving to another part of the vineyard, I noticed that someone else was also in the car enjoying the air-conditioner," he wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. Whitrow filmed the encounter, showing the curious koala crawling around in the backseat of his car, with his slightly confused dog looking on. "This is what happens when you leave your car doors open in a vineyard; koalas jump into your car," Whitrow said in the video. More unusual animal news Watch a kangaroo attack a landing paraglider in Australia … [Read more...] about Curious koala in Australia sneaks inside a parked car to cool off

In good news, scientists have not created a remorseless Terminator-style killing machine for real. In other good news, they've figured out how to make a liquid metal that can stretch in all sorts of directions. It looks like a sci-fi visual effect made real.The American Chemical Society released a video on Wednesday of the metal in action to go along with a paper titled Magnetic Liquid Metals Manipulated in the Three-Dimensional Free Space from the Applied Materials & Interfaces journal. The shiny liquid metal can be manipulated with magnets. It stretches like the fictional T-1000 robot from Terminator 2, and can also be used to complete a circuit. Scientists at Beihang University in China led the research project."They added iron particles to a droplet of a gallium, indium and tin alloy immersed in hydrochloric acid," the ACS reports. "A gallium oxide layer formed on the droplet surface, which lowered the surface tension of the liquid metal." This allows it to … [Read more...] about Scientists create liquid metal that stretches like Terminator